The worst cyber attacks of 2016
From leaking debit card details to influencing the US Presidential Election, cyber attacks have become a significant part of our political and social discourse. ET’s Nilesh Christopher takes a look at the top hacks of the year.
Bangladesh Bank Hacks
Who? Unknown
What? One of the largest financial crimes executed online took place in early February when $81 million of Bangladesh’s money was siphoned off by unknown hackers, reportedly to Philippines, Sri Lanka and parts of Asia.
Indian Debit Card Hack
Who? Unknown
What? As many as 32 lakh debit cards belonging to various Indian banks were compromised earlier this year resulting in the loss of Rs 1.3 crore in fraudulent transactions as per NPCI.
The hacks went undetected for months, and reports suggest ATMs operated by Japanese HitachiBSE 1.17 % Payments were infected with malicious software allowing hackers to extract money off user accounts.
Legion Hacks (India)
Who? The legion crew
What? Infamous hacker group Legion made headlines in the sub-continent after hacking into the Twitter accounts and partial email dumps of prominent public figures such as politician Rahul Gandhi, businessman Vijay Mallya, and NDTVBSE 1.51 % journalists Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar.
The group gave details of upcoming hacks, romanticised the use of drugs and promised to come out with more dumps in the coming days.
Dyn Cyber Attack
Who? Hacker groups anonymous and new world hackers claimed responsibility
What? The largest cyber attack in recorded history happened on October 21, causing temporary shutdown of websites such as Twitter, Netflix, Airbnb, Reddit, SoundCloud, etc. The three-fold hack caused mass internet outage for large parts of the US and Europe.
Servers of Dyn, the company which controls the lion’s share of the internet’s domain name servers (DNS) were attacked, which largely affected internet of things (IoT) devices.
Philippines Voter Data Leak
Who? Hacker groups Anonymous Philippines and Lulsec
What? Philippines suffered its worst-ever data leak when hackers divulged personal information of voters including fingerprint data and passport information of 70 million voters. The entire database of 340 GB of Philippines commission on the election (Comelec) was leaked online.
Russian Interference in US Elections
Who? Russian hackers
What? Russians hacked into the Democratic National Convention (DNC), influencing the election in favour of Donald Trump. The hackers, it is said, sent out repeated phishing emails to various US institutions before John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign clicked on one of the malicious mails allowing access to over 60,000 emails of the Clinton campaign.
Reports suggest the emails were forwarded to WikiLeaks website, which later published those mails in the run up to the US Elections tainting Clinton’s image further.
Yahoo Data Theft
Who? Unknown
What? Yahoo! reported two major data thefts this year: The first in September which affected over 500 million Yahoo! user accounts, and another in December which said one billion accounts were compromised. User names, email addresses, date of birth, passwords, phone numbers, and security questions were all leaked.
Mark Zuckerberg Hack
Who? OurMine security group
What? Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts were breached multiple times this year, because he reused a password “dadada”.
OurMine hacks into celebrity accounts to advertise their commercial services and even claimed responsibility for hacking into Sundar Pichai’s Quora account in June.
Oracle MICROS Hack
Who? Russian hacking group
What? A Russian hacker group notoriously known for hacking banks breached into the computer network of Oracle, compromising their MICROS point-of-sale credit card payment systems. MICROS is among the top three point-of-sale vendors globally.
Source: The Economic Times
